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CRON(8) FreeBSD System Manager's Manual CRON(8)
NAMEcron -- daemon to execute scheduled commands (Vixie Cron)
SYNOPSIScron [-xdebugflag[,...]]
DESCRIPTIONCron should be started from /etc/rc or /etc/rc.local. It will return
immediately, so you don't need to start it with '&'.
Cron searches /var/cron/tabs for crontab files which are named after
accounts in /etc/passwd; crontabs found are loaded into memory. Cron
also searches for /etc/crontab which is in a different format (see
crontab(5) ). Cron then wakes up every minute, examining all stored
crontabs, checking each command to see if it should be run in the current
minute. When executing commands, any output is mailed to the owner of
the crontab (or to the user named in the MAILTO environment variable in
the crontab, if such exists).
Additionally, cron checks each minute to see if its spool directory's
modtime (or the modtime on /etc/crontab) has changed, and if it has, cron
will then examine the modtime on all crontabs and reload those which have
changed. Thus cron need not be restarted whenever a crontab file is mod-
ified. Note that the crontab(1) command updates the modtime of the spool
directory whenever it changes a crontab.
SEE ALSOcrontab(1), crontab(5)AUTHORS
Paul Vixie <paul@vix.com>
FreeBSD 10.2 December 20, 1993 FreeBSD 10.2